LA MISIÓN’S SARITA KITCHEN PROJECT PROPOSAL

project overview

In Puerto Barrios, Guatemala the Sarita school with which La Misión works has a kitchen is in desperate need of improving. Currently, the women of the village prepare meals for the children at the school in a wood sided, aluminum roofed, one room building behind the school. In this room, there is a “pila” with a small water facet. This area is to fill up pots to boil food, and clean up pots and dishes after cooking. A small area for food preparation and to have it elevated off of the ground, though often times the large boiling pots are sitting on the ground. One electrical outlet provides electricity for the entire room, to use appliances such as a blender. Finally, there are two metal “grills” over a wood burning fire in the middle of the room used to cook boil water and cook the food served to the students in the Sarita school.

Despite the obvious unclean sanitation issues, such as unclean water, pests and parasites from dirt floors, and possible under cooked or mis-prepared food, there are other health risks to the kind of kitchen environment the Sarita school currently has for its students. As in each home in the surrounding village, the women cook over a wood burning fire inside their house/building structure. This first uses much of the villages natural resources of wood, depleting the forest surrounding them. Secondly, if not properly ventilated (as often is the case), the smoke from this wood burning fire fills the structure and is inhaled by all those inside. This occurring over many years and lifetimes of the families, mainly the women preparing the meals, causes respiratory distress and other respiratory diseases.

With your help, La Misión wants to build and provide a better, safer, more sanitary kitchen. This will not only improve health conditions, but will help provide an opportunity for hope by showing how God can provide for this small, rural village in the coastal rainforest of Guatemala.

project plan

La Misión plans to build a new kitchen structure for the Sarita village school in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. With the current kitchen standing on the property, we already have the location of where the new kitchen would be built. The current kitchen would be dismantled and the new structure would be built on the same site.

La Misión hopes that improvements will be made to the health of the students by having a modern and clean environment where food can be prepared for the students at the Sarita community school. The Onil stoves, sink with running water, electricity, dry storage, and cold storage will also give the teams from the United States who are serving in the community of Sarita the ability to prepare, cook, and serve different types of foods for the students, along with preparing and serving the Incaparina nutritional supplement. This new kitchen will not only allow La Misión to serve food to nourish the bodies of the students, it will allow us the opportunity to serve hope and God’s love as well.